


New Team

by abbichicken



Category: X-Men: First Class (2011) - Fandom
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, First Meetings, Friendship, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-12-17
Updated: 2012-12-17
Packaged: 2017-11-21 09:34:08
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,453
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/596203
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/abbichicken/pseuds/abbichicken
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A different kind of meeting for Erik and Raven.</p>
            </blockquote>





	New Team

**Author's Note:**

  * For [entigral](https://archiveofourown.org/users/entigral/gifts).



It has not been a good day. Erik shoves past the group of laughing, smoking, gabbling youths, doubtless on their way to some den of joyful abandon, crashes up the stairs to his room, sulking his way through the grubby, stained corridor in a filthy, back-alley 'hotel'.

He's been tracking Shaw for months, and the bastard slips out of sight every time Erik expects him to be around the next corner. He's exhausted: wants only a wash, and sleep.

Blearily, he tries to unlock his room, but the key sticks: it's already unlocked. Erik's skin tremours with familiar anxiety; his body floods with adrenaline. The key slams itself, unasked, against the ceiling. Erik swallows, quashes the panic, wills the key back to his hand. Deep breaths, deep breaths.

He pushes the door open, softly, quickly. There's a maid in there, straightening up the bed. This is wrong, Erik knows, because he always, always leaves the bed in perfect hospital-made condition when he leaves the room - leaves a hair across the fold of the covers here and there so he'll know if anyone's been in whilst he was out. There should be no need to touch his belongings.

"Sorry, won't be a moment," the maid says, not turning to face him.

"Please leave," Erik says.

"I just need to..." she says, but Erik has a hand on her shoulder, turning her around. She's a maid alright, wide eyes, long dark hair, lines on her young face suggesting hard work is something she knows well. All the same...a master key on a chain around her neck assuring Erik that he can 'deal' with her cleanly if needs' be. He's had to think this way all his life; it's nothing personal. He sees her face, though, and she is clearly scared. Something to hide?

"Who sent you?"

She shakes her head, rapidly, but there's something wrong here. He scrutinises her eyes...and then there's a flicker, there, in her left eye. A spark of yellow in the iris.

Interesting.

"Please, don't tell the hotel. Please. I'm only trying to...they don't know..." The flicker bleeds around the pupil, and then both her eyes crack sunshine-yellow. She puts a hand to her face, tries to duck out of Erik's grip, but he tightens it, digs his nails into the fabric of her shirt...which melts beneath his touch, transforms into something soft, scaly, interlaced...blue?

His hand jerks away.

"What the..."

In a moment, the smallest ripple of time, the maid in front of him transforms utterly, becomes...taller, more shape, less clothes - no clothes - red hair, completely covered in a neat, blue texture, not unlike scales. She crouches down, whether to cover herself or assuming a fighting stance, Erik can't tell.

He looks her right in the dark fear of her yellow eyes. She is...she is something very, very special indeed. But...special to whom?

"Where is Shaw?"

Her fear slips for a moment to make way for confusion.

"Shaw?" she repeats. "What is Shaw?"

"Or Schmidt? Dr. Schmidt?"

Nothing.

Erik chews the inside of his cheek, contemplating. He will not question her further. What would be the point? She is clearly genuinely afraid. And she is astonishing. He must know more.

"You are..." he says, and does not hold out his hand to once more touch the peculiar texture, as much as he wishes to.

"I know," she says, and hangs her head. "But I can change, I can, it's only if I get..."

"Scared?" Erik finds himself saying, before he can help himself. "Or...angry..."

She nods. Erik holds out his hand and, using all the strength of feeling he can find around the idea that he is not alone he levitates the pen at the desk. The girl's eyes dart from him, to the pen.

"You..." she says, astonished, all but gasping you too.

 _Get out of my space_ says Erik's mind, control lost, and the pen slips and darts at the girl, who, cat-quick, backrolls out of its way just in time to avoid it driving into her throat. She catches her breath, narrows her eyes, tries to be tough, but Erik is between her and the door and the fear shows up again immediately.

"I'm sorry," Erik says, and he means that, because she looks betrayed as much as she does frightened. "I'm sorry. I didn't mean to - I find it difficult to control."

The girl nods.

"My name is Raven," she says.

Erik nods back.

Silence.

The girl straightens up. She is quite something. The colours, most of all, they are not...they are not natural. And Erik realises he is staring at her, studying her, taking everything about her in as if she were a specimen of sorts, and that is a feeling that he has known, and it is not one that he appreciated: who knows who has studied her in the past?

"Forgive me," he says, looking away. "I have never met anyone so unusual."

"I have," she says, with a frown. "I have met others who can do unusual things. But you can...move pens?"

"Metal," Erik corrects her. "Metal. All metals."

"That must be..." Raven says, thoroughly debating what it might be, before she settles on "...neat?" She folds her arms, awkwardly, and changes into a teenage girl.

"But you don't need to do that for my benefit," Erik says. "Please."

"I should go."

But he can see she doesn't want to.

"Would you like a drink?" he asks. "Coffee?"

She nods.

"I don't have any food," he says, "but there's a café over the road that hasn't given me food poisoning yet."

"That sounds nice."

"When was the last time you ate?" he asks. The questions come automatically, they seem obvious. And in this moment she is looking at him as if no-one ever gave her the time of day before.

"I...yesterday."

"Let me buy you something."

"You want me to come with you?"

"I'll give you some money if that's what you want, but...you look like you could use a shoulder..." Erik's words feel awkward, twisted, but there is something so complicated behind Raven's approach, he wants to know more. She's met others? How many of them can there be? And, most importantly, are any of them Shaw's new toys? He's shy of leads at the moment: he needs all he can get.

"I can take care of myself," Raven says, and without so much as a glance, she's a boxer, strong, broad, sidling left and right, in silk shorts and nothing else. Erik recognises him from a poster he saw on the street.

"You are..."

"I can be anyone," Raven says, shifting back into her own skin.

"We can all be anyone," Erik says, "although, your costumes seem, it must be said, second to none. Will you give me a moment to change?"

"Of course." She walks over to the window, looks politely out of it, for there is nothing to see except a brick wall across the alley, and the kids, still having their fun down below.

She wonders, just as Erik did, what it must be like to live their lives.

"We must stick together," Erik says, putting an arm protectively around Raven's shoulder. She feels fragile, cool, alive beneath his hold, and for the most finely split of seconds, he knows he would deflect a bullet for her. The feeling catches him out, has him flinch, but this girl deserves that, deserves someone to feel that of her, with neither agenda nor intent.

"I can be useful to you," Raven says, changing into a lean, long-limbed, blonde-haired woman, right beneath his touch. Erik drops his arm quick as you like, shifts backwards. He holds up a hand.

"No," he says, out cold. "You don't need to be useful to me. Only to yourself."

Raven shrugs. "What's useful to me is having somewhere to sleep without one eye open."

"I know that feeling. I'm not sure you'll find yourself without it, if you stick with me." He's trying to warn her, but to Raven, it sounds like honesty, and that's something that's been tough to come by. It also sounds like this man is doing something...interesting with his...skills. That's definitely something she'd like to know more about.

"We'll take it in turns to sleep," she declares, offering it as the obvious solution. 

The idea needs some work, Erik thinks, but for the first time in a very, very long time, he's comfortable with the idea of company.

That night, he takes the armchair in the corner. Raven settles down, dressed in her own skin like she hasn't in forever. It's so much more comfortable.


End file.
